


All We Ask of You

by Lokei



Category: Hornblower (TV)
Genre: Episode: Mutiny, Episode: Retribution, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-18
Updated: 2006-08-18
Packaged: 2017-10-20 06:44:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/209871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lokei/pseuds/Lokei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All we ask of you is a lifetime of service, wisdom, courage.  To ask more would be selfish, but nothing less will do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All We Ask of You

Sawyer’s harsh voice grates upon the ear as he calls the hands to Sunday service and the traditional reading of the Articles of War, themselves so routine as to sometimes aspire to the moniker of prayer.

His eyes cover the hands, watchful, knowing. It is a captain’s role to know when to make eye-contact—to support or to scold through little more than a meaningful look while pronouncing a particular passage. Sawyer is a masterful practitioner of the killing look, and this time the punishment for mutineers is directed at his third lieutenant, of whose exemplary efforts on behalf of the service Sawyer has most certainly heard. If he sees the ghostly reflections of fireships and guillotines in Hornblower’s dark gaze, none knows but he, for the captain’s eyes slide away.

Whatever he might demand at any other time, in any other mood, in this moment he knows he can ask no more from this man than has already been willingly given.

XXXXX

Buckland stands, both amused and amazed at his fellow officer indulging in the frivolity of a deck pump shower before the gazes of the laughing hands. While he gives himself in his superior position leave to doubt the efficacy of Hornblower’s command after so publicly exposing himself without the armor of uniform and authority, he admires the man’s temerity all the same. And when the captain suddenly appears at his elbow and orders him to arrest Hornblower and the others, Buckland looks over the rail.

He does not see the shivering form, pale in the air which has so suddenly chilled, but the authority which Hornblower carries regardless, which rests in his steady gaze, no matter how informally attired the lieutenant. There is wisdom there, untouched by circumstance, and at Hornblower’s nod, Buckland is reassured. There will be another time.

And so he orders them confined to the hold, confident that he in his own wisdom has made the right choice. He does not meet Hornblower’s eyes.

XXXXX

Fear of turnips is one thing, and fear of heights another—but the fear that settles over them at Buckland’s words is in a different category altogether.

“I need a man to lay the charges,” he had said, looking straight at the third lieutenant. And Hornblower had answered as duty required.

With a steady voice he wishes them well—will see them soon aboard the Renown—clasps hands. His long-fingered hand when Bush takes it gives the tiniest tremble—one might even have imagined it. Hornblower does not seem to need the message Bush had been about to give, but his eyes and his grip convey it anyway: Courage, man, and underneath it lies a promise, though of what no observer might rightly guess.

Buckland might turn from the retreating form, but two will not. What has been asked of him they have also found in themselves, for his sake.

XXXXX

Archie has always thought that if ever he needed a barometer to judge people, Horatio would be ideal. The way people react to his friend has always amused Archie, and tells him a great deal more about them than they’d probably like to reveal. They all demand so much from him—service, wisdom, courage—which he gives and still they do not understand. Perhaps Captain Pellew—Commodore now, it seemed—had gotten closest to what Archie considers the truth, by demanding merely excellence, and getting it, too.

But as Archie watches Horatio be escorted back to his cell before what promises to be his final court appearance, he knows that no one else will ever quite know what he does:

Horatio delivers excellence to those who will accept nothing less, it is true, but he gives most and best to those who ask nothing at all.

Which is why as Archie feels the breath rattle in his chest it doesn’t hurt, because to Archie Horatio has given the most precious thing of all, though neither will ever name it. And the pain and the sweat and the involuntary tears are as nothing, because Archie has it in his power to give the one thing that Horatio would never even think to ask, even if he contemplates sacrificing himself for the honor of a dead man.

Archie will not allow Sawyer or anyone else to ask that of him.

He rolls slowly over and meet’s Bush’s surprisingly understanding gaze. “Would you call Dr. Clive, please, Mr. Bush? Tell him I need to speak to Commodore Pellew.”

When the moment comes, it requires neither service, nor wisdom, nor even courage, but that one indefinable thing that outweighs them all—nothing less will do.

Archie’s eyes brim with it as he locks gazes with Horatio, and he will never look away.


End file.
